Most coders think code rules everything.
Others think AI is the answer now.
I was one of them.
AI did change everything, just not in the way how most people see it.
To some, AI highlights the importance of writing; To others, it makes writing obsolete.
People think AI can generate anything, but they forget what it stands on.
Prompting is writing. The quality of your thoughts, articulated through prompts, dictates the quality of the AI's output. But all of this is irrelevant.
The core power of writing is thinking.
# You're Not Doing Enough of It
In the modern distracted world people don't get to think clearly.
They rarely write it down and mostly forget it.
Your goal is to increase possibility to have "shower thoughts" outside bathroom.
It's bad if you can't sleep when your brain races with ideas.
It means that you didn't get to think during the day, and now you won't get to sleep well, and your performance the next day will be diminished.
It's even worse if your brain is crying for just another reel and no real thoughts come to mind.
Once you start writing, you realize how flawed your own thinking is.
Writing offloads your thoughts from your brain and allows factual and logical analysis.
Once you start, you'll wish you did it sooner.
Try writing a simple blog post.
Your brain starts to branch off in ten different directions and you don't even know how to put it all together nicely in your head, let alone text.
Piecing it together forces you to:
Identify the core argument
Structure supporting points logically
Eliminate contradictions
Every poorly written document, every confusing product spec is the result of unclear thinking.
The result was writing, but the whole idea of it was flipped on its head:
The intention and motivation were missing, so people had to come up with something.
They weren't created as a result of a delibarate thought process in search of the best solution, they were created because people were assigned tasks to come up with something they don't even believe in.
Or the intention was there, but not in the best interest of the reader (suit speak, bureaucratic language).
# AI is a Blender of Ideas
AI is a tool, and requires a skilled operator. The text it spits out needs rearranging, editing and piecing together. AI can do it for you, but you won't be happy with the result. It'll sneak in parts you wouldn't like, delete critical pieces, and you might not even notice. The piece is there, but not quite: you ask, and ask, but what AI says is never quite right. The only solution is ditching the tool that doesn't produce results you want.
Think of AI as a smoothie maker: the ingridients are very distinct, they have their own flavor and colour. The strawberry is bright red, it stands out. The result mashed by the blades is uniform. The smoothie is tasty, but raw strawberry is tastier. It averages all the information it was trained on. If you ask AI to write in the style of Shakespeare, the output will be close to the original, like nature-identical flavoring. Amusing but mediocre.
If you used AI as a ghostwriter, you won't be fully satisfied.
You know it's machine-generated, your audience can feel it too. Your brain didn't come up with it, you don't feel a connection. You know it's fake even if it hits all the right spots.
It's fine for informational purposes: ask a question, get a straight answer.
But humans make sense of the world in stories.
Even informational content digests better if wrapped in a story.
AI has more knowledge than most people. But to write with it successfully, you need to be smarter than it is:
- Give it specific instructions, but broad enough not to strangle its thinking
- Provide high-level, abstract descriptions, so you don't have to describe the thing you needed the AI to generate in the first place
- You need to know which structures and hooks work well and how to prompt AI for it
If you don't know what hyperbole is, what value it brings to text, and you're unable to spot it, how do you know if AI has used it right or not at all? What if it did, but your content needs strict informational style?
# Writing For Builders
This isn't just for "writers". You want to make an app. You single prompt one-shot it with Cursor.
But apps are created by humans for humans. All apps have text, and it can make or break a product.
If user sees a claim which could be true, but the wording is off, they'll think: "Amateurs, I won't buy that". Their confidence in your product will drop. Poorly worded interface will spawn a thousand support tickets and refunds.
If you aren't thinking, you won't come up with original ideas worthy of prompting to begin with.
You can generate movies in a single prompt, but you're still not convinced writing is more important than ever? You need to become the next Dostoevsky to become the next Tarantino.
If people would stop writing without AI assistance, there would be no more fresh content to train it on.
Most AI content is slop for a reason.
How does it perform?
What's the general public sentiment towards it?
The rare slop that does perform well was born out of original human ideas.
Even if Elon Musk starts selling Neuralinks and we won't ever need text again, thinking will remain essential.
AI won't replace writers. It will replace people who don't write.
The most powerful person in this day and age is not the one that utilizes AI best, but the one with the clearest, most original thoughts and persuasive writing.
Go and create a thousand beautiful ideas. Think, write them down, tell the world.